


I Think I'll Wait Another Year

by dear_monday



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Death, Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 17:27:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3945430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_monday/pseuds/dear_monday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone should have a contingency plan for when the dead rise. Gerard's is to see his brother again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Think I'll Wait Another Year

**Author's Note:**

> Four ficlets based on four episodes of _[A Softer World](https://www.asofterworld.com/archive.php)_ by Emily Horne and Joey Comeau. Additional warnings for discussion of death and suicidal ideation. Big thanks to [viviansface](archiveofourown.org/users/viviansface) for talking me through this ♥

_i.[Middle of the night, I smell coffee. I get all the way to the kitchen, smiling, before I remember you're dead.](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=116)_

Gerard knows Mikey will come back. He knows it like he knows the way the ground smells after rain--it was raining the day he buried Mikey, fat, blood warm drops of summer rain that kissed his shoulders and the nape of his neck while he labored in the dirt--or the way he knows that thunder follows lightning: just something that _is_. The certainty has taken root in him like a plant, in his heart and in his guts, threading through his veins and wrapping itself around his bones. He knew he couldn't have Mikey cremated, that the only thing to do was to put him in the ground and wait.  
  
What Gerard doesn't know is exactly what he's waiting for. He visits Mikey's body often and he tries talking to it, sometimes bargaining, sometimes pleading. It doesn't help. For a while, Gerard leaves his front door on the latch and his window ajar at night, hoping. He shivers under the sheets when the cold breeze rakes over his skin, and every morning is another little bereavement when he wakes up alone. Eventually, he starts locking his doors again.

  
Gerard knows Mikey will come back, but that doesn't make his absence any easier to bear. Gerard feels his heartbeat falter when he sees a stranger with Mikey's eyes, feels his chest constrict when he plays Mikey's favorite song and hears Mikey singing along, as if Gerard's memories have imprinted themselves onto the vinyl. He'd be lying if he said he never thought about following Mikey down, just stepping off the sidewalk into the traffic or filling his stomach with pills. It would be easy. Easier than this, anyway. The only thing that stops him is the thought that Mikey is coming back, and Gerard has to be here when he does.  
  
Gerard knows Mikey will come back. All he has to do is wait. He can do that.

 

 

 _ii.[Everyone should have a contingency plan for when the dead rise. Mine is to see my brother again.](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=527)_ [  
](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=527)

The day it finally happens, it looks like the end of the world. There are emergency news broadcasts and military helicopters carving up the  sunlit sky, cell networks buckling under the weight of billions of frantic phone calls, complete gridlock on the streets. Ghost towns blossom in all the chaos and the panic, springing up like mushrooms after rain. People are leaving the cities, fighting like animals in gas stations and grocery stores for canned goods and bottled water and loading up their cars before driving out into the wilderness, away from the graveyards.  
  
Not Gerard.  
  
He sits in front of his decrepit old TV set, listening carefully to the news anchor telling him that the dead are clawing their way out of the earth. The news anchor looks to be on the verge of tears, but Gerard's heart is beating deafeningly in his ears and he realizes that he's laughing. He laughs until his stomach aches and his breath comes hard in ragged gasps, punch-drunk and reeling with joy, alone in his basement room. Just in case Mikey needs his help, he takes the shovel from the closet - the same shovel he used to bury his brother eleven months, thirty days and nine hours ago - and starts up the stairs towards the front door.

 

 

_iii.[He looks the most like my brother when he laughs.](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=201)_

People come back different. It makes sense, really, Gerard isn't surprised. Mikey spent a year lying cold and hungry and alone under the earth before the Rising came and Gerard stood in that cemetery in the August heat and dug him up. He still remembers the blisters on his palms as he drove the blade of the shovel into the soil, the rich, dark smell of earth and pine, the sweat running down into his eyes and plastering his clothes to his body, the chorus of cicadas in the trees and the grass and the dead emerging from the dirt around him, blinking in the light. Mostly, though, he remembers Mikey's pale hand reaching blindly towards him, and then the look on Mikey's face when Gerard finally stumbled down into the grave, sobbing, the shovel forgotten as he held his brother in his arms. He remembers the first thing Mikey said, too, his voice soft and cracked like parched ground with lack of use: "I knew you'd come."  
  
It's still Mikey, there's no doubt about that. Gerard would know. So what if his eyes are somehow deeper and darker now? Gerard knows Mikey doesn't want to talk about it so he doesn't ask, but his baby brother has walked through the valley of the shadow of the death and it's no wonder the things he saw and the things he knows show on his face. And so what if Mikey doesn't sleep these days? He barely slept before he died and he says he did more than enough of that while he was in the box.  
  
The thing that Gerard dug out of that grave is his brother. He's sure. He's almost completely certain. Especially when it laughs. It looks the most like his brother when it laughs.

 

 

_iv.[We don't have to be who we were before now. I could be proud of my body. You could be a vampire or something.](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=711)_

"Gee?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
It's late, the only light a cold orange glow from the streetlights outside. Mikey is stretched out on the couch, Gerard beside him on the floor. Mikey doesn't sleep anymore, but Gerard sleeps better knowing Mikey is just an arm's length away. Sometimes Gerard jerks awake from nightmares where Mikey rots before his eyes, the flesh melting from his bones as he climbs back into his grave, and Mikey's cool fingers comb through Gerard's hair until his breathing slows and the terror fades.  
  
Mikey's voice is low and soft, almost guilty. Gerard recognizes it as the 3am voice, the voice people use for the things they can't bring themselves to say in the light. "Am I... you know, different?"  
  
"You've always been different," Gerard murmurs. His own voice is muzzy with sleep, warm and contented.  
  
"You know what I mean," says Mikey.  
  
Gerard doesn't answer straight away. "I guess," he says. "A little. Why? Do you feel different?" He looks over at Mikey, his profile a cutout silhouette in the gloom, his eyes glinting orange.  
  
"I don't know. Maybe. I don't... I can't remember."  
  
"You were dead a long time," Gerard says. "I'd be kind of surprised if you weren't a little different."  
  
Mikey is silent for a beat before he speaks again. "Been thinking," he says. "Would it be so bad? I mean. I wasn't exactly... before."  
  
"You were just fine before," says Gerard fiercely, propping himself up on his elbows and looking over at Mikey's dark outline. He's used to defending Mikey, even from himself.  
  
"No, no. I didn't mean it like that. I meant I wasn't--happy." The word comes out as little more than a whisper.  
  
Gerard knows. Gerard knows that a happy man doesn't chase a handful of painkillers with a half a handle of vodka and take a walk across the interstate. Gerard knows that Mikey wasn't happy and that was what ate Gerard up inside that year while Mikey lay buried.  
  
"But you think you could be now?" Gerard says softly.  
  
"Yeah," Mikey murmurs. "Maybe."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Another Year: A Short History](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3950476) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account)




End file.
